Carolyn and I had a really great break over the holidays, even though she’s had a pretty bad cold the past couple days. Since I didn’t blog much at all over the past week or two, here’s a wrap up of recent stuff:

Once again I’m reminded of how important breaks are. After going strong for several months, it was so refreshing to have some down time. Between Christmas and New Years Day, Carolyn and I did as absolutely little work-related stuff as possible. We knew it’d all be waiting for us this morning!

On Christmas my dad turned 60. The whole family gathered at my brother Jason’s house to celebrate. It was great getting to spend time with our new little nephew, who’s two and a half months old. And of course the other kids are lots of fun too!

We had to say goodbye to our cat Emily on Friday, December 28. We’re still not exactly sure what happened, but she became sick a couple days before and died that morning. Even the vet couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on with her. So we’re still really sad about that, as is our neighbor across the street who also helped take care of her.

On Christmas Eve we had a nice worship service at CrossWay. It had the highest attendance of the year. Several old friends came by and it was great to see them! Some of our kids signed “Silent Night,” which was really cool.

Carolyn’s dad also had a birthday over the holidays. We had lunch with the Dohertys that afternoon, which was really nice.

Some friends of ours from SonRise, Brian Warren and Rachael Stephanos, got married last Saturday. Congratulations Brian & Rachael!

On Sunday I watched the Cowboys-Redskins game at the home of John Coleman, pastor of The Gathering Tree. I was surrounded by Redskins fans. Pretty humiliating.

This Sunday we start a new five-week series that I’m pretty excited about. More about that in future posts.

Over the holidays I read some fiction, and was reminded of how much I love a good story. Most of my reading the past couple years has been nonfiction, so it’s been nice to leave reality and delve into Blink by Ted Dekker, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, and another book I’ve been reading with Carolyn that I’m not going to name because it’s a girl book.

The day after Christmas, Carolyn and I spent several hours at my parents’ house looking at pictures from their trip to Israel in November. It was fascinating to see all the places they went and hear about everything they did. There were about a thousand pictures! Carolyn put them on a DVD at a three-second-per-picture pace, and we paused it whenever a picture evoked a story or required explanation.

Carolyn’s parents gave me a Tony Romo jersey for Christmas. And a very, very nice one at that!

This year I cut back on my Christmastime eggnog intake, but increased my cookie consumption. Bottom line: I still put on my extra December fat.

For Christmas, Carolyn gave me the complete series of Voyagers on DVD. Sweet.

My four-year-old nephew can look at the logos of every NFL team and name the city and mascot. Pretty amazing for a four-year-old! He demonstrated this for me twice.

This past Sunday morning Carolyn and I went to The Gathering Tree. It was great! They baptized five people. The music and message were upbeat. They’ve really got a great atmosphere over there. One of our CrossWay people, Norm Cain, is a retired pastor and he preached at CrossWay. I look forward to hearing his message and will podcast it as soon as possible.